A certain number of reasons are pushing aircraft manufacturers to attempt to motorize the wheels of the aircraft, notably using driving actuators equipped with electric motors. Such motorization in fact has major environmental and economic advantages (reduction of fuel consumption, reduction of noise when taxiing, etc.), and makes it possible to implement new functions: manoeuvring of the aircraft when the engines are stopped, reversing, remote control of the aircraft on the ground, etc.
Those designing and fitting aircraft wheel driving actuators must make the actuators conform to numerous technical requirements specified by aircraft manufacturers that are particularly constraining.
The increase in the mass of the aircraft resulting from the incorporation of driving actuators must be controlled and reasonable, so as not to render negligible the benefit in terms of fuel consumption resulting from the use of these actuators. Now, the rotation speeds at which the wheels of the aircraft must be driven and the torques that the driving actuators must develop are high and necessitate heavy and bulky actuators.
It is moreover important to ensure that the presence of the driving actuators does not interfere with maintenance operations effected on the landing gear of the aircraft. In particular, it is desirable to minimize the impact of the presence of these actuators on the time taken to remove a wheel and on the time taken to remove a tire from the wheel on which it is mounted.
It is moreover a requirement that the driving actuators can be installed easily on the landing gear of different types of aircraft without major integration effort. Now, the mechanical interfaces of the landing gear legs, the wheels and the brakes equipping the wheels can vary greatly between two aircraft of different types.